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The mise en scene plays and important role in the setup of the mood the director wants to create. Alfred Hitchcock obviously knew this idea and implemented it into the making of his films. In the first few moments of the crop-duster scene in North by Northwest the position in which the characters and set are portrayed on the screen creates suspense. The very first view shown of the set of the crop-duster scene creates suspense simply by having contrast to all of the previous settings. The set initially presented from a long high shot portrays the brown and barren countryside that Roger Thornhill, the main character of the film, finds himself abandoned in. This comes as an unexpected surprise for all previous scenes are of cities and other populated situations.
Thornhill himself seems unnatural in this new setting. Having seen him for the entire first half of the movie in the city and now standing with his nice Fifth Avenue suite on in the middle of nowhere is nothing less than strange. Hitchcock gives no obvious motive for the movie to go from the city to the country. Suddenly taking Roger from the city and placing him in an empty and alien countryside for no apparent reason sets up suspense for the rest of the scene. However Hitchcock does not rely on the stark contrast of the set alone to set up suspense. The initial positioning of Roger Thornhill in the scene creates suspense.
The frame is filled mainly with the blue sky with the brown countryside taking up the bottom and with Thornhill off in the left corner of the shot. Something seems to be missing in the shot. With Thornhill, the only element that this shot could really focus on, off on the left and right side basically empty the shot if left unbalanced. Hitchcock intentionally makes the frame unbalanced with the empty space on the right for a specific purpose.
He realizes that the viewer knows that huge amounts of money are not spent on movies to film nothing. It is unusual to have an unsymmetrical shot with empty space left unfilled. This emptiness on the right therefor creates a sense of wrongness. This then may give the viewer a sense that Thornhill situation is all wrong. A situation that appears to be wrong creates suspense Next the element of suspense comes from the positioning of the stranger who enters on the right side of the frame while Thornhill still stands on the right. The shot now balanced creates suspense in a new fashion.
Thornhill and the stranger are portrayed in a way similar to the conventional poses of two gunfighters facing off before a gunfight in an old western. The two face each other with the width of the highway in-between them. Thornhill expects to be meeting someone out here but he does not know anything more than the name of the person to meet and the location the location. With the person assumed to be the contact man standing across the screen tension builds for the gap between the two must somehow be closed and then the situation must be resolved.
Thornhill does not know how the space will be filled nor what action will occur next. With the location of the scene in a dusty and lonely setting, the unknown relationship of the two men, and the distance between the two something must happen. Both Thornhill and the viewer are left clueless as to what is about to happen and this is truly pure suspense. The stark setting of the scene and the position of Thornhill in the initial few moments of the scene are a part of the mise en scene of the crop-duster scene that create suspense. With the few images the viewer becomes ready for something to happen but they really do not know what.
The suspense Hitchcock creates in this scene is truly brilliant.
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Research essay sample on Crop Duster Scene Scene Creates Suspense Thornhill
